Thread: First Year Blues

I know the season is not quite over yet but this first year has been very slow. I so far have the dedicated contracts that clean around $75/week. I have advertised and advertised every tactic known to man door to door, flyers, website, Facebook, eddm, everything. Is this typical for the first year? I'm going to continue with our business as scheduled fall clean-ups, Christmas light install and removal, and snow removal. Any other ideas on how to drum up more business?

The size of our county is 760 Sq Miles were the largest county in NC, downside most of this land is pasture land or has Tyson chicken houses on it another down side is there are 5 well know LCO's around. Then you have the 25 dollar a yard guys they are the ones that really hurt new guys here because they are not just upstarts they are mostly retired guys who own a commercial mower and just want something to do. All thought I've gotten several complements on our lawn care thats about as far as it gets. If it doesn't pick up a little more next year I may have to throw in the towel. Included a photo of our work

If your serious about this industry keep your head down and keep pushing forward with all the tactics you have been using as well as website and chamber of commerce etc.
contrary to popular belief this is not an easy business at all.
Good luck !

Word of mouth is the holy grail, but it's tough to get there. Not every customer will give you a recommendation, not because of what you do - it's just their personality. You will learn to recognize the type of customer that tells their friends. The type of person people go to for reccomendations. When you find these people, go the extra mile. Stay after to talk to them, give free advice, pull weeds out of their flower bed, ect. Remember, you can never go wrong by focusing on the customer. The money will soon follow.

Google Adwords is another good channel for customers. You can sign up for free and see how many people are searching for a given term in your area. Also, investing in SEO is good. For starters, you can register a domain with your city or county. For example, www.<city name>lawncare.com will get better results than www.<owner's last name>lawncare.com. Have a section that lists all the neighborhoods or towns that you service. These will get crawled by search engines and you will likely be amongst the top results if someone happens to search that neighborhood.